Cocktails with Cloves
Cloves are the dried, unopened flower buds of the clove tree, used whole or ground as a warm, intensely pungent spice.
Substitutes for Cloves
The real question is not what replaces it but how to keep control of the timing: whole spice can be lifted out, ground cannot, and a syrup moves the decision to the day you made it.
Often confused with
Ground cloves
Ground clove cannot be fished out, and it goes everywhere at once; use a quarter of what you think and taste before adding more.
Allspice
A single berry that tastes of clove, cinnamon and nutmeg at once. It is a gentler stand-in, not the same spice, so a mulled drink comes out rounder and less sharply medicinal.
Storage
Whole cloves keep for years sealed and dark — two to four, by the extension-service figures — and the test is aroma rather than texture: if the smell has faded, so has the oil. Ground clove is worth checking at six months and replacing when it stops smelling of clove, and it is worth buying in the smallest jar sold.
